How to survive with an alcoholic

“When our relationship started, we liked to wander around the city with a bottle of wine or drink beer on the boulevard. At first, I even liked what Vika was becoming: she laughed, danced, invited passers-by to sing together. But it’s one thing when a young girl behaves like this, and another when an almost forty-year-old girl grabs people by the sleeve.”

For fifteen years of marriage, 42-year-old Anton more than once had to drag Vika on himself from restaurants and nightclubs and then load them into a taxi. “She has friends, girlfriends who also like to drink, in this company not a single meeting is complete without vodka. When we come to visit, and I persuade her to limit herself to a couple of glasses, she looks at me as if I were an enemy. I did not want to believe that my wife was an alcoholic, I was ashamed. But it is so”.

“We lived in a building without an elevator, and it was very difficult for me to drag Misha to the fourth floor. Once I decided: let him sleep on a bench near the house. But it was embarrassing in front of the neighbors, and I was also afraid that he would freeze, die, and I went down and again dragged him up the stairs. 34-year-old Nina talks about it calmly, even casually. Her husband is sober very rarely, but she does not leave him – without her, Misha will completely get drunk and die.

“He is very talented, he writes such magical songs. Well, now he hardly writes anymore, but when we got married, he constantly composed them and dedicated them to me. I sometimes sing them to Misha: what if he remembers how good it was for us when he drank little? But Misha always shouts: “Shut up!”, throws things. I’m scared. He seems to be turning into another person, evil, cruel, capable of anything.

Many could subscribe to these stories. Many families do not withstand such a test and break up. But there are couples in which the spouse, despite the ardent advice of others to quit the alcoholic, remains nearby, suffers and asks himself every day: how can he (she) be helped? What can you do to bring your loved one back to life? Unfortunately, there is no universal answer to this question. But there are several options for behavior that make it possible to be close to a loved one in his suffering and not die himself.

help yourself

Until a person himself wants to get rid of alcoholism, attempts to persuade him to stop drinking are in vain. He himself knows that his lifestyle is destructive, and the pressure from the outside in this case only increases the desire to hide from the world in drunkenness.

An alcoholic drinks for various reasons that have made him addicted. But even after knowing these reasons and presenting them to him, it is impossible to instantly reorient him to a healthy lifestyle. The alcoholic must come to the need to stop drinking on his own, and the task of relatives is to prepare for the day when he decides to start treatment. You can, for example, make inquiries about the centers where they work with alcoholism problems, and about the groups of anonymous alcoholics operating nearby, unobtrusively offering this information to a loved one.

This does not mean that you need to make an appointment with a specialist or arrange a first meeting with the group members – the alcoholic must do these actions himself! But relatives can help by being nearby, supporting at all stages of treatment and meeting relapses of the disease without panic.

When accompanying a loved one on the path to recovery, one should not forget about oneself: in order to be close to an alcoholic, you need a lot of strength. Constantly fearing that he will start drinking again, you can destroy your own health, both mental and physical. “It’s better to admit that we are simply not capable of some things in a relationship with another person,” says the French psychoanalyst Marie-Claire Lejeon, “this allows us to alleviate our worries and look at the situation from the outside.”

Do not force him to admit the disease

There are many reasons for people to drink: it is a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, and an attempt to escape from life’s difficulties, and unhealthy relationships in the family, and the influence of the environment. “Mechanisms for the development of addiction are complex,” says psychotherapist Guzal Loginova, “but we tend to explain the behavior of a loved one who has become a stranger in the simplest terms.”

Inspiring themselves that “he just has a weak will,” or trying to hide the bottle, loved ones often deny the complexity of the problem and protect themselves from negative emotions. This also explains the obsessive desire to force a person to confess his alcoholism.

“At some point, I started bringing Misha books about alcoholism,” says Nina. – It seemed to me that if he realized that he was an alcoholic, uttered these words, everything would be different. I kept asking him to say this, and he drank more and more in response.”

It is commonly thought that the alcoholic should simply be aware of his problems and stop lying to himself and others. “This is not a lie, but a legal defense! – the psychotherapist Vladimir Esaulov objects. “A person suffering from alcoholism has the right not to want his personality to be reduced to the label “alcoholic” or invaded in his personal space.” Excessive persistence will lead to the fact that the drinking partner will feel humiliated – and get rid of unpleasant feelings in the usual way.

Understand your personal role

It is important to pay attention to how the relationship of a loved one with an alcoholic is built: the situation in the family is not the last factor influencing a person’s desire to drink. It is necessary to realize, without blaming yourself, your own involvement in the family system, consisting of “I” and a drinking partner. “I tried to free Vika from household chores so that she would have time to think about herself, to find some interests,” Anton recalls. “But things got worse. She came at night drunk and shouted: “You don’t need me! You hate me! You don’t even let me wash the dishes!

The situation may be even more complicated. “Drama is beneficial to those who experience it,” explains Vladimir Esaulov. “The wife or husband of an alcoholic doesn’t realize it, but they are attracted to the role of victim, the opportunity to be a caregiver.” Moreover, the thought of one’s own importance in the life of a partner can force a non-drinking spouse to provoke an alcoholic during periods of abstinence – casually draw his attention to the wine department in a store, leave a bottle in the refrigerator.

“When Misha drinks, it’s terrible,” says Nina, “but when he doesn’t drink for a long time, I start to feel somehow strange. My husband is busy with his own affairs, and I have a lot of free time that used to be spent looking for him, quarrels.

Back to life

“We need to establish autonomy where alcoholism creates codependency,” explains Guzal Loginova. “When the partner returns to life, the spouse will have a desire to join him.”

“You take the whole world away from the alcoholic. What will you give him in return? — wrote the Russian psychiatrist Pyotr Gannushkin. It is worth suggesting other options: going to the cinema, meeting friends, traveling. And talking with your loved one is not about alcohol, but about what is happening inside, about your feelings, even if they are only impotence and indignation. “In this case, he will not have to defend himself,” Guzal Loginova continues, “and the partner will be heard sooner.”

But it’s not easy to stop playing the alcoholic game. “Giving Vika the opportunity to independently fight her passion for alcohol meant for me to leave a person in trouble,” Anton recalls. “But if I hadn’t stopped the ‘you drink, I save you’ game, she wouldn’t have looked for means to save herself.”

Take him teetotal

Abstinence from alcohol, alas, is not the end of the difficulties. Even if the partner has been waiting for this moment for a long time, he may not be ready to meet the person who was hiding behind the bottles. “There was a moment in our life when Misha decided to code,” Nina recalls. “It didn’t last long, but I remember how unpleasant he became: a squeamish, perpetually dissatisfied face. I didn’t want to come home from work.” A bad mood is not the only unpleasant change in the behavior of a “tied up” alcoholic, and one must be prepared for this.

Deprived of constant attention, a person who has stopped drinking can begin to attract the interest of others by other methods. For example, scandals in the family and at work, complaints. The best way to help a loved one adapt to a new life is to accept him as a non-drinker and give him the opportunity to rediscover himself in society and family. And if earlier he was assigned only the role of an alcoholic, then with the onset of abstinence, such a person must be reinstated in the roles of a spouse, colleague or parent in order to regain balance in a normal, healthy life.